


After All

by iamdemosthenes



Series: Powers AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Powers, Gen, Hunk (Voltron)-centric, Intro to the series, just the intro tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 08:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13736808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamdemosthenes/pseuds/iamdemosthenes
Summary: Finding Pidge on Garrison’s roof with weird technology? Strange.Chasing people, and being chased by people, across the desert at night? Crazy.Flying through space in a robot Lion and meeting aliens? Insane.Hunk wanted to go home. Or wake up. If he was dreaming, this was a terrible, never-ending nightmare.





	After All

**Author's Note:**

> This is the intro to an AU in which the Paladins all have powers related to those of their lions, and their armor is a bit different to account for that. Think something like a mix between the Paladin armor and BOM armor. I guess the timeline is a bit different from the show too.

Finding Pidge on Garrison’s roof with weird technology? Strange.

Chasing people, and being chased by people, across the desert at night? Crazy.

Flying through space in a robot Lion and meeting aliens? Insane.

Hunk wanted to go home. Or wake up. If he was dreaming, this was a terrible, never-ending nightmare.

Apparently, neither was a viable option. They had to go find more weird robot Lions. Thanks, aliens. Real nice.

And now Hunk could shape rocks. He thought that was pretty cool. Not something he’d thought he’d ever be able to do, but he never thought he’d meet aliens either. The others had some powers now too, and they’d all spent a good amount of time training with them in addition to learning how to fly their Lions.

Getting that far, however, had been interesting, to say the least.

***

“I’m so glad you’ve all found your Lions,” Princess Allura beamed, crystalline blue eyes sparkling. She and her advisor, an eccentric, older alien named Coran that Hunk liked, had assembled the five ‘Paladins’ in the training room after much needed sleep, meals, and explanations. They weren’t done yet, as Allura had made obvious that morning with a shocking wake-up call. Followed by flight training and a surprise attack from the Galra. Day One and Hunk felt certain he was sore in places he didn’t think could be sore. The others seemed no better off, for the most part.

“Since you’ve had some time to get acquainted with your Lions, I thought now would be a good time to tell you about the things that accompany them,” Allura continued.

Though exhausted, the Paladins gave the Princess their full attention. They’d already learned not to slack off in her presence.

“Each Lion has it’s own set of abilities; some are fast, some are strong, but in addition to that, each is tied to one of five elements. These manifest in things like flamethrowers and wings on the Lions, but they also appear in the Paladins as well,” Coran added.

“Does that mean we get to breathe fire and fly? ‘Cause that’d be awesome!” Lance grinned.

“No, they’re probably more specialized,” Hunk inferred. He doubted they’d all have the same abilities, despite his friend’s enthusiasm.

“That’s correct, Hunk,” Allura smiled. 

Hunk blinked. Huh.

“Each of you will develop abilities related to those of your Lions in time. When you do, we can compare them to those of the Paladins of Old to help you learn to master your new abilities,” the Princess continued.

Which is exactly what they did. Except, as it turned out, the Lions were far better at teaching the Paladins about their powers through their bond, and the castle’s records went mostly unused as a result.

Lance was the first to discover his ability, and he made sure everyone was well aware of the fact. A mission to a swampy planet had been made considerably easier when Lance, after complaining of the muck, tripped and fell into the reeds. Hands stretched out in front of him, he had instead fallen onto a sheet of ice, with the only explanation being his powers. Lance spent the rest of the trip changing water to ice, back again, and then into mist, all the while providing the team with a frozen walkway through the marsh. Hunk was just glad that his feet weren’t stuck in the mud anymore, and the rest of the team shared the sentiment. For that, they could all tolerate a little of the Blue Paladin’s excitement.

Allura was ecstatic to hear the news when team Voltron returned, and dragged the hapless Blue Paladin to the castle records room. There they spent a few vargas reading about the original Paladin, only to discover that his ability had been vastly different, and so set off to question the Blue Lion.

Blue’s response had been to whisk Lance away to a watery planet for nearly a week. Inefficient as it was for the rest of the team, now unable to form Voltron, it had produced a significant boost in Lance’s control of his power. Thus, Allura had to forgo her original plan and allow the Lions to teach their Paladins themselves. When Lance returned from his escapade, Hunk made Celebratory Space Nachos. They were green and tasted like Mentos, but it quickly became tradition.

Hunk was next, when they were working on the Balmera. He’d been able to smooth out the rut in the ground made by the pod he and Coran had taken, thereby postponing their detection by the Galra. It bought them enough time to fix the pod and find a crystal, but they were soon discovered regardless. Shay thought it was pretty cool, so Hunk was pleased about that.

With the castle repaired and in space, Yellow took Hunk to an asteroid belt of unusual composition and prompted him to sculpt a fair number of the space rocks. Yellow sat and watched his progress until he could do so with a decent amount of detail and attention to the structure of the rocks. He’d broken a few in the beginning, where the cracks and pores of the asteroids split through if he wasn’t careful. Soon, however, he was making miniature Lions and massive pies to orbit a dying star. Pidge called him “surprisingly poetic” when he’d mentioned it in his full report during Space Nacho night.

A trip to the planet of the Olkarion people had unlocked Pidge’s abilities alongside those of her Lion, and she’d stayed behind an extra week to talk with Ryner and practice among a species with a similar ability. Pidge found that she could create vines and expedite the growth of existing plants, something that she’d grown to enjoy over her stay on the planet following her initial reluctance to set foot on it.  
When she left, Ryner gave her some seeds, and she started her own garden on board the Castle of Lions in the Altean equivalent of a greenhouse. Green was pleased with the development, and often encouraged her Paladin to take a break from her tech to work with the plants. Pidge later approached Hunk with an armful of purple lemons and demanded that he find some use for them. She had hundreds of them. The team was sick of the things by the end of the week.

For Shiro, the key had been strengthening his bond with the Black Lion. His experience on the Astral plane had awakened him to something, and when asked, Black only gave vague hints. It took some time, but Shiro eventually pieced together that he could teleport across short distances. Once he’d gotten that far, all that was left was to master it. Black then spent the rest of the week asking the others to give Shiro increasingly tedious tasks around the castle, forcing him to teleport in order to accomplish them. Hunk’s favorite was when he’d helped Pidge hide the new batch of purple lemons in strange places around the castle-ship and asked Shiro to find them all.

Keith’s challenge came only after an extended test of patience through the rest of the team’s display of abilities (though not always intentional, but Hunk could only vouch for himself). Discovering his ability to safely raise his body temperature, and thus radiate heat, had prompted Red to drag Keith off to a remote system with twin planets, one frigid, the other volcanic. 

On the first, Red had set him down with one instruction: Survive. She sat as Keith wandered the frozen planet, waiting until he could sustain his temperature with ease. On the second, Red deposited her Paladin among the lava fields with directions to withstand the combined heat of himself and the planet. Only when she deemed his progress sufficient did she allow him to return.

Each discovery improved Allura’s spirits regarding the Paladins at the war with the Galran Empire, and she continually encouraged their progress towards mastering their abilities.

Though, none of them expected their lives to depend on it.

And Hunk still wanted to go home, but that became an ‘eventually’ wish instead of an immediate one. Defending the Universe was pretty cool, after all.


End file.
